Nothing Left
by Miranda Crystal-Bearer
Summary: One-shot. Complete. AU. When the only thing you know is how to fight, you just can't quit, even when you have nothing left to fight for.


**A/N:** Hey guys. It's been too long since I've been here. But I am going to work again on _Dance With Me_. I promise. For now, here's a bleak little piece that surprised me, but pleased me as well. It's _not_ Team-13 universe, just a random AU.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing of the anime/manga Naruto.

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Hayate stared across the grey-lit lawn and contemplated taking up smoking again.

It would give him something to _do_ at times like these, while he waited. He leaned back on his right hand, left hand keeping a slow steady rhythm through his partner's hair, head cradled in his lap. The sick smell of bile rose from the bucket nearby. Hayate shook his head, hair damp with dew, and studied the man's face by the grey light of dawn.

Whether it was the new treatment or just the disease gaining ground, Izumo had lost weight again. His cheeks had begun to hollow, the fine bones of his face pressing against the skin. Hayate's lips tightened as he ran his hand down across Izumo's shoulder, over the man's ribs, feeling through fabric for muscle and bone and trying to gauge if he'd lost enough weight to need hospitalization...again. Izumo would hate it, but if he couldn't keep his pills down in a few hours, he was going anyway.

Not for the first time, and definitely not for the last, Hayate wondered why he was doing this.

It would be so much easier to just let them lock Izumo away, leave Hayate to his falling-down house and shattered reputation. Easier still to let them send him and his squad on that last mission, just stop trying and die at an enemy's blade. It wasn't like it mattered much anyway, he thought wryly, watching the grey predawn light reveal the ragged yard, the creaky sagging porch, the tattered hems of his yukata. Izumo's hair needed cutting again, he noticed absently, raking the thick bangs away from the narrow bony face.

He glanced behind him, eyed the clock through the open shouji. Nearly six. He sighed and leaned over, shaking Izumo by the shoulder. "Hey. Izumo. C'mon, wake up. Izumo. Wake up."

Mismatched eyes blinked open as Izumo dragged up out of sleep, dazed and unfocused. Hayate persisted in the shaking and talking, until Izumo croaked an incoherent protest at him. Hayate waited, feeling bleary-eyed himself. He hadn't slept since one this morning, after he'd woken and found Izumo puking his guts out.

"I hope you're done spewing," Hayate sighed, voice cracking dryly. "Time for your meds."

"Gods, stab me now," Izumo answered, and turned his face down against Hayate's thigh.

"Don't tempt me," Hayate replied, and jabbed his knuckles into Izumo's ribs. "Up, lazy whore."

"Damned sadistic psychopath," Izumo returned, bony hands pressing against Hayate's thighs as he pushed himself up. Even that started him shaking, turned him pale and green around the edges. Hayate shook his head and got to his own feet, grimacing at the chorus of cracks and pops, the aches in his body from sitting still too long in the damp morning chill.

"Hands up," he told Izumo, and held out his hands.

Izumo reached up obediently, grabbing Hayate's wrists with his awkward grip. Hands locked over Izumo's scarred forearms, Hayate pulled and took a step back as Izumo braced and lurched to his feet....only to stagger and crumple as his legs gave out from beneath him. Hayate swore and lunged to catch him. Grimly, he decided Izumo had lost weight again, as he juggled them both and Izumo made breathless noises as he got pinched and jabbed in the struggle to stay upright.

"Gods, y'can't be gentle can ya?" Izumo demanded, voice strident as ever.

"What's it now?" Hayate demanded, ignoring the complaint. "Low sugar, new treatment, or just getting worse?" He needed to know, and tried to dismiss the lurking fear.

"Low sugar," Izumo answered, confidently, working weak limbs back up under himself. "But the puking's from the new treatment," he added. "Screws my system every time they change it up. Chakra network's all in knots. Bathroom first," he ordered, as they made their slow way into the house, Izumo's arm hooked around Hayate's waist, Hayate's arm draped over one shoulder and looped under the other. "Gotta pee. And my mouth tastes like something frickin' died in it."

"Yeah, your big fat ego," Hayate answered, even though the ancient joke didn't have any humor left in it anymore. "It's a wonder you got anything left in you, as much as you threw up last night," he grumbled. Fortunately the house was small, tiny, and their slow pace didn't matter that much. Hayate was already short of patience, though, by the time he helped Izumo get situated in the cramped bathroom.

"They wanted to keep me yesterday," Izumo told him, shaking hands brushing at his hair, rubbing at the near-constant fever-blister on his lips. "Told 'em to shove it an' came home. Hate hospitals."

"Shoulda let 'em, stupid." Hayate shook his head, leaning a hip on the counter. He gave his own hair a few quick combs with his fingers, then raked the entire mass back and fished an elastic out of the clutter on the counter. He bound the graying mess of his hair back with a few quick hand motions, though his wrists were trying to ache and be stiff. "Especially since it's a new treatment. Like I coulda done anything if you'd seized or had a heart attack or whatever."

"Sure y'coulda." Izumo smiled mirthlessly. "Put a kunai in me and finished the job, see? Now help me up so y'can poke me full of pills."

This time, expecting the lack of help, the process went much more smoothly. The cleaning-ritual was performed, right down to the brisk attack with the disinfectant to the counter, toilet and sink. Hayate had grown used to the pervading smell of disinfectant, even though he knew it wouldn't really do anything to keep him from getting infected. But it would keep Izumo from catching other diseases...the last thing he needed was to catch anything else. It would probably conquer his immune system at last, and that would be that.

Hayate wondered why he bothered. It was only a matter of time, after all....

But then, they were both fighters, weren't they? It wasn't in them to give up. Even when they had nothing left to fight for.

Izumo was deposited at the table, where he started sorting through yesterday's unopened mail. Hayate went to the kitchen and started the task of doling out pills and dosages and bland food that might sit on Izumo's uneasy stomach. He emerged with twelve pills of assorted sizes and colours, a glass of orange juice and a glass of water. These he set in front of Izumo before retrieving his second load: a bowl of plain brown rice and a slice of dry toast that had been practically smothered in strawberry jam. He set these down and waited while Izumo choked down one dose of pharmaceuticals after the other, steadily draining the water-glass between pills.

"And here I was getting used to eating normal food," Hayate sighed at him, as the last pill went down. "I guess it's back to existing on eggs and rice and the occasional leaf of lettuce, huh?"

Izumo coughed, retched, but kept it all down. He grimaced, for a moment wearing the distracted look of a man desperately trying to master his innards. Then he looked up at Hayate, tapping a letter spread on the table. "Higher-ups say they want us reporting for duty on Saturday. 'Nother S-rank for us. And they got a new one to replace Kon." He bared his teeth at the rice. "Yum, bland."

"Told them your treatment was getting changed. Think you can be mission ready in three days?" Hayate asked, over his shoulder as he marched back to get his own breakfast. Matching rice and toast and juice, though his rice had a few strips of leftover fish and a few sad vegetables mixed in.

"Does it matter, Captain Psychopath?" Izumo asked, through a mouthful of rice. "ANBU's famous Suicide Squad will report in for duty anyway."

"Shaddap, whore." Hayate started eating, even if he wasn't hungry. He never was, these days. At least Izumo was keeping his appetite...otherwise they probably would've starved some time ago. "Can make 'em hold off for a few days if y'need. They always indulge the crazies--and half the greenies at the mission desks are convinced I'll eat 'em if they say otherwise."

"Just tell 'em your pet sodomite threatened to breathe on 'em." Izumo snorted. "Told 'em the other day they should let me in to tell the Academy brats just how great the Seduction Corps are. See, you turn out like me, diseased and crazy and dying of AIDs!" Izumo cackled a laugh, managing to sound utterly demented.

"Oh, I bet they denied ya, huh?" Hayate rolled his eyes. He knew the answer. They were veteran ninja, labeled completely crazy and sent to die by the village they'd so faithfully protected. "If they let you go in to talk seduction, they gotta let me in to talk about torture and comrade killing. Also how to deal with the shrinks."

Because he wasn't insane, not really. He'd seen ninja go insane, seen madness and defiance in last minutes of life. Suicide missions, taste of fear and insanity, but he was still here, eating breakfast and pondering his continued existence. Still alive and serving the village that had used him, broken him, taken everything from him, refused to heal him and kept trying to cast him aside. He wondered, grimly, why he bothered.

"Ooooh, and then we can both do the ANBU rep," Izumo crooned into his orange-juice. Hayate eyed the levels of food in front of him--sometimes after a night of vomiting Izumo bolted his breakfast and made himself sick again. But today it looked like he was pacing himself properly. "And tell them that when they put you on the Suicide Squad to get rid of ya, you're only supposed to last three months, not three years."

Hayate, three-year veteran of ANBU's Suicide Squad, captain for two and a half of those years, barked a dry laugh. "You know me. I'm just too crazy to know when to die." The truth rang bleakly in his ears--he should have died eight years ago, with his wife....four years ago, with his best friend....

"Me, I'm a medical anomaly," Izumo declared loftily, then dropped his fork. Cursing he scrabbled after it, his all-but-ruined hands making the task almost impossible.

Hayate watched him; Izumo, scarred and diseased and victimized. Izumo, survivor of suicide and missions and poisonings. Izumo, ex-Seduction Corps and veteran ANBU and ninja for almost twenty-eight years, from twelve to almost forty. Izumo, confirmed with HIV and AIDS and told three years ago he was going to live just six more months. Izumo, kept alive on experimental chakra-treatments and more chemicals than any man should voluntarily swallow and sheer blind determined will.

Izumo scooped up his fork and got after his rice again. Hayate shook his head; at Izumo's stubbornness, at his own. "Just keep your breakfast down today, miracle whore."

"But you love it when I'm in pain, sadistic psychopath," Izumo snapped back.

"Not when I'm cleaning up puke."

"I'll make it up to you."

"Keep your diseased lips to yourself."

"How dirty-minded. I was just thinking you could stab me instead."

"Then I'd be cleaning up blood. How's that better?" Hayate examined his toast with new appreciation, though. From being sick as a dog and unable to walk back to biting wordplay within hours. Izumo was a fighter, alright. And maybe that was why they kept hanging on.... "But I think you just made me get an appetite."

"It's a miracle!" Izumo grinned. "I always knew you were a sadist at heart."

"Shaddup, whore."

There wasn't anything left to fight for, but they just didn't know when to quit.

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**A/N: **And end. I was surprised by the swearing, but it seemed to fit the tone, and I couldn't change it. Please forgive me. And thank you, as always, for reading.


End file.
